We were asked to speak in church a few weeks before we moved to Snowflake. It was a poignant moment for me. Saying goodbye to people who I had known and loved for seventeen years was both bitter and sweet, but I wanted them to know how much they had meant to me, so I began by reminiscing.
“Change is hard, isn't it, but it is also good,” I said. “I remember the first time I came to this ward. We sat on the third row, right there in the middle. Back in those days I hadn't even met Moe yet, it was just me and my five kids, and mom and dad. Linnea, my oldest daughter, had just turned twelve, Stephen was only five. I had been single for over three years, and dad built us a special double home here in Gilbert so we could live together and take care of each other.
“It was kind of scary, coming to a new ward. I was worried what you would think about a divorced woman moving in. In the other wards I'd lived in there were lots of singles, and they had all kinds of activities, like family nights and firesides and stuff. To tell you the truth, I really didn't like going to those things. I just wanted to be one of the normal families. You were wonderful. You welcomed us in and never made me feel different. It probably helped that I was the only single adult in the ward, but I always felt like an ordinary mom here. That is one of the many lessons I learned from you and will try to remember; how to accept people for who they are, and not for the label they carry.
“My first callings in this ward were with the youth. I loved getting to know your teenagers.
“One lesson I will never forget I learned from Jace Sanders, who was in my Sunday School class. Linnea and Holly, my two oldest daughters, came home from school one day and told me about what he did.
“There was a retention basin outside the gym at Gilbert High School One day a bunch of kids were walking across the parking lot going to seminary. It had rained the day before, and the basin was full of muddy, dirty water. The kids were goofing around beside it, and somehow a boy fell into the muddy water. He wasn't one of the LDS kids, in fact the girls said he was a skater, someone who was NOT part of their crowd. They all saw him fall into the mud, and kind of snickered as they walked past. After all, he wasn't in their group. But Jace stopped and waded down into the basin, giving the boy his hand to help him stand up and climb out. Then he took off his own, clean shirt, and gave it to the boy!
“Jace did what the Lord would have done that day, and he made me ponder my own actions. Would I have had the courage to do what he did?
“Yesterday, when we were up in Snowflake with mom and dad, I talked to mom about some of the things she remembers learning from the people here. You made such a difference in our lives. Mom talked about her sweet friend, Wanda Strebeck. What faith and strength Wanda had when she discovered she as dying from cancer. She taught us all how to truly trust the Lord. Mom reminded me of Wanda's last Sunday when she bore her testimony. She was so frail and worn, but I will never forget the strength of her testimony. She KNEW that she would be with the Lord soon, and that death was not the end. What touched mom the most was Wanda's optimism. She told us her children said it looked like she was in melt down, like the Wicked Witch of the West. Even in the face of death, Wanda still smiled. Mom has often told me she wants to be able to leave this world smiling, the way Wanda did.
“I don't think any of us who knew him will ever forget the things that Denny Allred taught us, either. I have often thought he was perfect before he got cancer, and that the reason he was allowed to stay on the earth so long, and to suffer so much, was not for his benefit, but for ours. By watching him we learned how to endure to the end. The thing I learned most, though, happened years earlier when he was our gospel doctrine teacher. One Sunday he brought a recording of the old hymn, Come, thou Fount of Every Blessing. As he read the words, and then as we listened to the music, I felt my heart burn inside. It was as if those words were coming straight from my soul. Especially the last phrase of the song:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, Oh take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.
“That is my dilemma in this life. I want to be perfect, I want to obey the commandments and be like the Savior, but I am prone to wander, to stray from the path without even realizing where I am going. Which brings me back to the point of this talk. I need help to remember what I am supposed to do, so I can make the corrections which put me back on the path.
“Brothers and sisters, you have helped me do this during these past seventeen years. Every time I listen to you teach me a lesson or hear you give a talk, I am reminded of where I need to repent and change.
“I don't know why the Lord has blessed me to be able to work with all the wonderful people I have worked with over the past years, but I think it is because He knows I needed you. What fun I have had serving with you, but most of all what important things I have learned from you. I don't believe I have ever gone to a meeting without coming home with some new insight.
“Our family has been blessed with the leaders we have had in this ward. If it wasn't for our first Bishop, Bishop Price, Moe and I would never have met. He sent me to work in the Temple so I could find a husband. Then he called the Temple and told them to give me a job where I would meet everyone who came there. I was made the cashier in the cafeteria, and Moe was a Temple worker. He came through to get his dinner the very first night I worked there.
“One of the most important lessons I have learned, and hope I will always remember, is that things really do come to pass. It seems like yesterday we moved into this ward, when Linnea was twelve. Now we are moving out, and she and the other older kids are grown and married and we have added two more daughters to our family. It's hard to believe that now Kamala is twelve years old.
“I remember wondering back then if I would ever get married, I was single for six and-a-half years! But that passed, and Moe and I will celebrate our fourteenth wedding anniversary in just over a month. Having five children within seven years meant that we had four teenagers at the same time, and Stephen turned thirteen just a few months after Linnea turned twenty. There were times when I wondered if we would ever make it through those years, too, but they also came to pass. Thank you for helping me make it through the trying times as well as the good ones. It's a true principle, things really do always get better.
“Thank you for helping us have such a wonderful seventeen years here. We love all of you. I hope that we will see you often during the coming years, but I beg you to forgive me in advance if I can't remember your names. I can't remember anyone's names, just ask Kami and Krissi. They are used to being called Linnea and Holly and Alyssa, and even their aunts names, and they don't seem to mind too much unless I call them Russell or Stephen. I'm afraid, in time, I may not even remember your faces. If that happens, please just tell me who you are and give me a hug, OK?
“I promise you one thing, though. I will never forget what you have taught me, because that has become a part of me. Through the years ahead, I pray that the Lord will help me to remember what I have learned, so I can repent, and change, and get back onto the straight and narrow path when I need to. Change may be hard, but it is so worth it.”
